Due Anima
by Darth Tabby
Summary: Rosalia is a uniquely independent cyborg with an exemplary record... and feelings of intense loneliness. Marisa meanwhile is a cyborg who has just suffered an immense loss. Can reaching out to a grieving comrade help Rosalia heal her own emotional wounds?


Disclaimer

I do not own the rights to Gunslinger Girl. They belong to Yu Aida.

A Note from the Author

This fic is set after the end of Volume 10 of the Gunslinger Girl manga, which hasn't been released in North America yet (though this doesn't matter much since it doesn't feature much about any of the canon characters). The two girls it focuses on are Second Generation cyborgs, who are typically older at the time of conversion then the First Generation ones who have been the primary focus of the GSG anime thus far. I'm actually generally more of a fan of GSG when it focuses on the First Generation girls, but I've been finding this fanfic much easier to write then _The Huntress' Dilemma_, a fanfic about a First Gen cyborg named Diana that I attempted to write before I started on this one. So I hope you'll forgive the very untraditional nature of my first fanfic for this series.

Hope you enjoy reading this as much (or more) then I enjoyed writing it!

Sincerely,

Darthtabby

Due Anima

Introduzione One:

Rosalia

"So if we have Savio's team create a big distraction out front, then the rest of us can sneak in from the rear," a dark haired young man in casual clothes noted, pointing at a position near the top of the map in front of him.

"True, but then where's our path of retreat going to be?" a somewhat older man in a suit asked. "I don't see any way we can bring the cars up behind this place."

"We'll run for it," the young man replied. "I think they'll be more worried about dealing with the aftermath of our attack then trying to pursue us."

"That's a rather dangerous assumption to be relying upon," a third man noted as he leaned casually against a wall. "These guys are professionals."

"Well what would you suggest then?" the young man in casual clothes demanded. All three men, as well as ten others, were gathered in a medium sized room with the blinds down, studying a map that was laid out on the room's central table. A wide variety of weapons -ranging from an old BM-59 battle rifle to a futuristic looking Steyr AUG- were positioned around the room, generally resting near the hands of their respective owners.

"Personally, I'd wait for him to leave his residence," the third man told the rest of the assembly. "His security detail will be smaller once he does that."

"True," the second man noted. "But then we need to decide where we-"

He was interrupted by the sound of a buzzer ringing.

"That the door?" one of the other men asked quietly, his hand moving towards the grip of a nearby Uzi. The man in the suit shrugged.

"Yeah. Just give it a minute. Whoever it is will probably leave."

The room fell silent for several moments, and then the buzzer rang again. The man in the suit glanced at the man who was closest to the window.

"Claudio, can you check who that is?" he asked. The man nearest the window nodded and laid his rifle against the wall before tugging slightly at one of the slats in the blinds. He studied the view outside for several moments, then shrugged.

"It's some girl," he informed his companions. "One who owns a motorbike, from the looks of it."

The sound of the buzzer came again, followed this time by the sound of knocking.

"She's persistent," one of the men noted.

"Indeed," the man in the suit agreed. "She probably thinks someone's here because of all the cars out front. Why don't you ask her what she wants, Claudio?"

Claudio nodded his head.

"Yes sir," he agreed, raising the blind part way and opening the window enough so that he could lean his head out of it.

"Is there something I can do for you, miss?" he asked. The girl at the door turned and smiled up at him, a slightly embarrassed expression on her face.

"I'm really sorry, but can I use your phone? My bike broke down, and I forgot to charge the battery on my cell."

Claudio studied the visitor for a moment, making note of her appearance and trying to determine whether she was a threat. She appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties, tall and lean in build, with raven black hair that reached about half way down her neck and strangely odd coloured eyes, the left of which was green and the right of which was blue. She was dressed in a red top and a snug fitting two piece motorcycle suit, with a riding helmet in the crook of her arm and a small messenger bag slung over her shoulder. Overall, she projected a bit of a tough girl image, but didn't actually seem very threatening.

Claudio glanced back at the others in the room, particularly the man in the suit.

"She says her bike broke down," he whispered "Do you want me to let her in? There's a phone downstairs she could use, and I could always lend her my cell for a minute."

The man in the suit considered for a moment.

"As long as you don't let her up here we should be fine. I think it's about time we took a break anyway. Just tell her you've got company upstairs."

Claudio nodded quickly and turned his attention back to the girl outside.

"I've got company over, but you can use the phone downstairs if you're quick. I'll be there in a moment to let you in."

With that, he ducked his head back inside and lowered the blinds again.

"This'll only take a few minutes," he noted. The man in the suit nodded.

"Alright everybody, I guess we'll take ten minutes. Be ready to go again once they're up."

All around the room, restless bodies began to move.

"Man, I really need to take a leak," one man noted.

"Better hurry up then, because you're not the only one," one of his buddies warned. A chorus of laughter echoed across the room as its various occupants began to disperse.

Pausing to make sure his jacket was doing an adequate job of concealing the pistol he was carrying, Claudio made his way down the stairs and through a corridor to the front foyer of the house, a cramped affair with a closet on one side and a small table on the other.

"Hi," he greeted the girl outside as he opened the door.

"Hi," she replied with a flush of embarrassment. Claudio smiled at her.

"The phone's at the back of the house, past the stairs. C'mon, I'll show you."

The girl nodded.

"Thank you. Do you mind if I leave this here?"

She held up the motorcycle helmet, and Claudio shook his head.

"Not at all. Just put it on the table there."

Giving the girl a moment to do as he had instructed, Claudio led her down the corridor that cut through the centre of the house, regretting as he did so that he didn't know where her loyalties lay. If he knew she was sympathetic to the cause of Northern Independence, he might have invited her to stay a while. She was quite good looking, and she seemed like a nice girl in spite of her somewhat wild appearance.

"You said you were having company over, I hope I'm not interrupting anything," she fretted. Claudio shook his head.

"Don't be," he told her. "They're all upstairs. You're not bothering any of them."

"That's good to hear," the girl noted ominously.

Claudio didn't even have time to realise he was in danger before a pair of hands grabbed him from behind and quite abruptly snapped his neck.

***

An impassive expression on her face, the odd eyed girl in the motorcycle suit slowly lowered Claudio's body to the ground, setting his limp form down with barely a hint of noise. Turning away without showing any sign of remorse, she stood up, unzipped the messenger bag she had been carrying, and reached into it.

What she withdrew was the sleek, sinister looking form of a SA 391 _Skorpion_ machine pistol, a tiny but deadly weapon of Czech origins. Taking a moment to unfold the weapon's stock and activate the laser sight that was mounted on it, she reached into the bag a second time, withdrew a thirty round magazine, and slammed it into the magazine well. From there, all it took to read the weapon for action was to release the bolt and switch the fire selector off safe.

Her preparations complete, the girl made her way up the corridor to the staircase, paused for a moment at the foot of it, and then bolted rapidly up the steps, submachine gun in hand. The sound of her footsteps was the only warning the men upstairs ever had.

***

Outside in the warmth of the midafternoon sun, the peace and quiet of a street in a small Italian town was abruptly shattered by the sharp cracks of automatic weapons fire.

***

The first men to fall were the two standing to the right of the staircase, waiting in line to use the washroom. The girl with the Skorpion cut them down with five rapid fire shots, each fired in semi automatic with deadly accuracy. The third was one of the men gathered in the house's main living room, standing there in shock as the casual conversation he'd been having was cut short by gunfire. A three round burst to the chest took him down quickly and efficiently.

From there, everything dissolved into chaos.

Startled into action by the sight of their comrades being cut down right in front of them, the men in the living room began scrambling for their weapons, some drawing pistols while others made desperate attempts to seize their rifles and submachine guns. Surveying the scene with an impassive expression, the girl in the motorcycle suite ranked them by the threat they posed and engaged each of them in turn, the angry staccato of her burst firing Skorpion filling the air as she unleashed cold fury upon her enemies.

In an empty study down the hall, three of the other members of the gathering stared around in alarm as the sounds of the assault reached them.

"Shit, it's the police!" one of them yelped, an expression of panic on his face. Not wasting a moment, one of his more level headed companions -a young man named Savio- drew his pistol and made his way to the doorway, where he risked a quick look out into the hall. Seeing the bodies of the men who had been standing outside the bathroom, he ducked back inside the room and motioned towards the nearest window.

"Both of you out. Now!"

The other two men in the room stared at him.

"But-"

"We're dead if we stay here. Go! Move!"

The other two men in the room stared at Savio for a moment longer, then bolted for the window and threw it open, practically leaping through it in their haste to escape whatever had slain their comrades. They were all out within seconds.

Meanwhile, the slaughter in the living room had reached its bloody climax. Three men had been cut down trying to bring pistols and a submachine gun to bear against the assailant, while a fourth had grabbed an old G3 battle rifle of the table, intending to bring the high powered weapon into play against his attacker. He managed to get as far as releasing the bolt of the rifle, which already had a magazine inserted in its mag well, but took two bursts to the chest before he could deactivate the safety and get a shot off. Stunned, he fell backwards with the G3 still grasped limply in his hands, and the girl moved directly to the final target in the room, who was trying to engage her with a Steyr AUG. Ducking out of her opponent's line of fire a split second before he loosed a burst, the girl fired off the last round in her Skorpion's magazine as she dove for the floor, the distinctive sound of her weapon's bolt hold open device impossible to hear over the ear-splitting fury of the AUG. The girl had been counting her shots however, and even before she pulled the Skorpion's trigger she was reaching into her jacket for the CZ2075 RAMI she was wearing in a right side shoulder holster. Ripping the tiny nine millimetre free of its hiding place with practised speed, she thrust it towards her enemy and fired four rounds, aiming directly for his centre of mass. He staggered, reflexively firing a burst from his AUG into the wall in front of him, then collapsed to the floor, his weapon falling silent. The girl in the motorcycle suit proceeded to shoot him in the head for good measure.

Silence descended on the room as the echo of the last gunshot faded, and then the girl was on her feet again, tossing aside her empty Skorpion and reholstering the half expended RAMI. Moving quickly over to the dead man with the G3, she relieved him of the rifle he had so conveniently loaded for her and started towards the corridor with purposeful strides. Passing the staircase, she stopped in front of the bodies of the men who had been waiting to use the bathroom and extended her left arm, reaching across the bathroom door to the doorknob and giving it a sharp yank. Being locked, the door failed to open, and her action was greeted by a pair of pistols shots which splintered the wood of the door at about chest height. Pulling her arm back, the girl gripped the rifle she was carrying firmly, took a moment to ready herself, and then struck the door with a powerful roundhouse kick, splintering the wood around the doorjamb and sending the door itself flying open with a loud crash. Pivoting back behind cover, she thrust the G3 around the edge of the doorframe and opened fire, blindly sweeping the confines of the bathroom with a long burst of full auto. She then spun out into the doorway, braced the G3's stock firmly against her shoulder, and fired a three round burst into the torso of the stunned man who was crouching at the back of the room, finishing him off before he had a chance to recover his wits and fire the revolver he was holding.

Turning and stepping past the bathroom, the girl continued down the hallway, the G3 held diagonally across her chest so that it could be swung up into a ready to fire position at a moment's notice. There were three rooms remaining for her to check, two on the right side of the corridor and one on the left. The two on the right contained little of interest, but the one on the right –a small study at the front of the house –was another matter. As she entered the room, her eyes were drawn to an open window and a curtain that was billowing in the wind.

Realising what had happened almost immediately, the girl sprinted to the window just in time to hear the roar of an engine and catch a glimpse of a dark grey Alfa Romeo as it pulled away from the curb and accelerated down the street. Raising the G3 to shoulder level, she prepared to open fire on the departing vehicle, but stayed her finger just before she pulled the trigger. She had little chance of actually stopping the vehicle's escape, and putting bullet holes in the car would only encourage the fleeing terrorists to abandon it sooner. It was best she let them go for now –as long as she knew what vehicle they were in, she had a good chance of being able to catch up to them later.

Laying her borrowed G3 against the windowsill, the girl zipped up her motorcycle jacket and made her way back to the living room, where she recovered the Skorpion she had abandoned earlier. Reloading the weapon with a magazine from her messenger bag, she descended the stairs, walked down the corridor, and strode boldly out the front door, picking up and donning her motorcycle helmet as she passed through the entryway.

Fifty-one seconds after she left the house, the growl of a motorcycle engine was heard from further up the street.

***

"What the hell happened back there?" Guido -one of the small group of men who had managed to escape the safehouse- demanded as Savio's dark grey Alfa Romeo 159 stormed out of town, its engine howling as it barrelled down a straightaway. Ignoring his companion's words, Savio kept his attention on the road ahead as he threw the sleek sedan into a sharp turn, swerving into the oncoming lane for a brief moment as he fought to keep control over the careening vehicle.

"I don't know and I don't care," Guido's other companion, Ignazio, replied. "All I want right now is to get out of here before whoever did that can catch up to us."

"So do I, but I also want to know what happened back there," Guido insisted. "Who attacked us? Was it the police?"

Ignazio shrugged.

"Maybe," he replied as the car careened into another turn. Raising his voice to be heard over the squealing of the tires, he added "They might have been GIS or something."

"Yeah, but aren't they supposed to ask us to surrender before they attack?" Guido demanded. "Whoever it was just went in and started shooting."

"They were probably a death squad," Savio told his companions, his eyes still focused on the road ahead as he spoke. From his point of view, that was the most logical explanation for the enemy's force centred approach and lack of a proper perimeter.

"That makes sense," Ignazio agreed. "That would be just like those government bastards. Get a group of killers to hit a place and then blame the results on 'infighting.'"

Savio was about to reply when the car rounded a bend and nearly collided head on with a large cargo van that was heading in the opposite direction. Guido yelped in fright as the big vehicle flew by, and even the calmer Ignazio felt prompted to voice his concerns.

"You might want to slow down a little," he advised Savio. "All the speed in the world won't do us any good if we crash before we get to our destination."

Being both intelligent and relatively level headed, Savio had already been having similar thoughts, and eased up slightly on the accelerator as his Alfa weaved its way through the last few bends that led from the town to the road below.

"Yeah. Should try not to overheat the engine either. This thing is going to have to last us until we get to the next town at the very least."

Its speed dropping back to a somewhat more manageable level, the fleeing Alfa made its way through the final set of turns in the road and emerged onto a long straightaway. Seeing his escape route opening up before him, Savio pushed down on the accelerator once more, intending to take advantage of the clear path her had been presented with.

"We'll ditch the car when we reach the next town," he informed his companions. "From there, we should hopefully be able to make our way to Florence. It's probably best if we split up. They may be looking for a…"

As he spoke, a sleek black motorbike rounded the bend that led to the straightaway, its engine growling as it began to close in on the fleeing Alfa. Seeing this in the sedan's rearview mirror, Ignazio's eyes widened as he remembered the words Claudio had spoken less then ten minutes before.

_"It's some girl. One who owns a motorbike, from the looks of it."_

"Savio!" He yelled. "Behind us! Watch out for that bike!"

Glancing up at the mirror for a moment, Savio caught a glimpse of the rapidly gaining motorcycle, then stomped on the accelerator.

"Oh _shit!_"

Responding to its master's bidding, the Alfa surged forward, but it couldn't outpace the pursuing motorbike, a high performance Ducati with enough engine power to propel a small car to highway speeds without too much trouble. The distance between the two vehicles began to narrow rapidly as the motorbike's rider unleashed her machine's full potential.

Seeing this, Savio began yelling to his companions.

"Shoot her!" he ordered as the image in the rearview began to grow larger. "Take your guns and shoot her!"

Not wasting a second, Ignazio moved rapidly to comply with his comrade's order, drawing his pistol and hitting the button to roll down the rear window on the Alfa's right side, but Guido began to panic.

"I don't have a pistol! All I had was my rifle!" he yelled to Savio. Glancing in the rearview mirror once more, Savio motioned to the dashboard in front of Guido.

"There's a Model 92 in the glovebox!" he yelled to his passenger. "Take it!"

Guido needed no second bidding. Grabbing the proffered Beretta from its hiding place, he undid his seatbelt and hit the button to roll down his own window, determined to drive off the monster that was pursuing them. Noting that his companions would be able to maximise the amount of firepower they could bring to bear if he could keep the motorcycle on the right side of the car, Savio swerved over the road's divider into the other lane, positioning his Alfa as close to the edge of the pavement as he dared to while travelling as such high speed. Shots rang out as Guido and Ignazio opened fire on the motorbike, both men letting loose with rapid fire salvoes as they attempted to take down their foe.

Clutching the Skorpion she had used during the safehouse assault firmly in one hand, the girl on the motorbike checked her advance as the two men in the car began shooting at her, hanging back so as to allow them to empty their magazines before she closed in for the kill. Savio realised what she was trying to do and issued a warning to his companions.

"Shit, stop firing! She's trying to make you waste your ammo. Stop shooting and wait for her to close in!"

But it was too late. Guido and Ignazio had already emptied the magazines on their pistols. Ignazio, being the more composed of the two men, began to reload almost immediately, but it was to no avail. Pulling into position directly behind the speeding Alfa, the girl on the motorbike thrust out her arm and opened fire with the Skorpion, emptying the fast firing machine pistol's entire thirty round magazine into the back of the fleeing car in one long, sweeping burst that filled the passenger cabin with bullets and bits of debris. His concentration broken by the onslaught and the lance of pain that was produced by a hit to his lower back, Savio lost the battle to remain in control of his vehicle, which promptly veered off the road, jumped a ditch, and slammed into the low stone wall that bordered a nearby field, its front end crumpling like an empty soda can as it struck. Upon impact the car's airbags exploded from their recesses, but failed to stop Savio –who hadn't had time to fasten his seatbelt in the haste of his escape- from being flung through the windshield. Preceded by a shower of broken glass, the unfortunate driver cleared the hood, sailed over the wall, and landed in the grasses beyond. He bounced once as his shoulder made impact with the ground, then landed hard on his back, his vision going blurry with the force of the blow.

***

Back on the road, the girl with the Skorpion closed her motorcycle's throttle and applied its brakes, sliding to a stop some distance beyond the point where the Alfa had jumped the ditch. Turning the bike around, she drove slowly back towards the crash site, coming to a halt and dismounting as she neared it. Dropping the kickstand into place, she fished another magazine from her messenger bag and reloaded her weapon.

Submachine gun in hand, she walked off the road, leaped the ditch, and began to advance on the remains of the wrecked Alfa, fully intending to finish what she had started.

***

Staring up at the sky and unable to move his body, Savio fought to remain conscious in spite of the pain emanating from his back and right arm.

_Am I bleeding?_ He wondered as he lay there in the field. He must have been, but how badly? The pain from the impact with the ground was so overwhelming that he could barely feel anything else. For all he knew he could have a major wound and not know it.

Before he could give the issue too much thought, a sharp crack from the direction of the crash site reached Savio's ears. Hearing it, he wondered if any of his companions were in better shape than he was. Perhaps one of them would be able to get help…

A shadow fell over the wounded terrorist as a figure in a black motorcycle suit stepped into view, its face hidden behind the tinted visor of its riding helmet. It looked at him for a moment, then aimed the machine pistol it was holding at his head. Seeing this, Savio breathed in sharply, his mouth opening in preparation to speak…

Whatever he had been about to say went unuttered as the girl in the motorcycle suit ended his life with a single well placed bullet.

***

It was late afternoon as a figure on a sleek black Ducati ST3 sport-touring bike pulled over to the side of a lightly travelled rural road, coming to a stop a short distance behind a silver Volkswagen hatchback. Shutting off the engine and dropping the kickstand, the bike's rider removed her helmet and stepped down onto the pavement, the heavy soles of her riding boots clicking on the concrete as she did so.

Up ahead, the driver's side door on the Volkswagen opened, and a man in his late thirties emerged, dressed in a black Armani suit. Striding back to where the girl had parked her bike, he stopped a few feet in front of her.

"So how did it go?" he asked. The Ducati's rider shrugged as she unzipped the messenger bag that was slung over her shoulder and began to dig around in it.

"It's done," she replied. "They gave me an opportunity to strike, and I took it."

"So it went well then?" the man asked.

The girl made a noise that sounded like a cross between a snort and a laugh.

"I wouldn't go that far," she told the man with a small shake of her head. "I'm going to have to have a word with our intelligence people when I get back. I realise no one is always going to be right, but it's still a problem when they underestimate the enemy's numbers by a good third or more."

The man in the Armani suit whistled a little.

"That bad, huh?"

The girl nodded as she took a lighter and a carton of cigarettes from her messenger bag.

"Yeah, things got a little dicey for a bit there. I came close to taking a burst of five-five-six to the face and I had to chase three of the guys down on my bike afterwards. They ended up having a little accident outside of town."

The man in the suit nodded.

"Where there any witnesses to that part?" he asked.

The girl shook her head as she lit one of the cigarettes from the carton.

"No. There weren't. And I made sure there weren't any survivors who could recognise me either."

The man in the suit nodded again, this time approvingly.

"Good. You're always very thorough."

The girl shrugged her shoulders in response. There was a reason why she was trusted with carrying out missions without direct supervision from a handler, and it wasn't just because of the special circumstances surrounding her recruitment. She was the sort who tended to cover all her bases.

"So are we heading back to Rome now?" she asked. The man in the Armani suit grinned and shook his head.

"No."

The girl blinked and paused, the cigarette she had been holding half way back to her mouth.

"We're not heading back?" she asked, obviously surprised.

The man in the suit shook his head.

"No, we're not. Or more specifically, you're not. I am, but you're not."

The girl stared at the man in front of her.

"Why not?!" she demanded, an incredulous look on her face. The man in the suit grinned even more.

"Because you're on leave," he informed her. "A couple of us on the support staff noticed that you hadn't taken a day off in months, and we thought you could use a little break. So I told the boss that you were showing some signs of stress when I made my last report, and I managed to talk him and the section chief into granting you a short leave."

Rosalia Lombardi, AKA 'Rosa' -the SWA's sole independently operating cyborg assassin- hung her head as realisation sank in.

_So that's what this is all about_. She should have guessed that it was something like that. Baldovino was the support staff member with whom she'd worked most often on her missions, and while she'd hesitate to call him a friend, there was a sort of camaraderie between them. It was just like him to look out for her interests.

_I wonder who else was in on this. That Priscilla woman from Intel, maybe?_

Putting on a determined expression, Rosalia raised her head and confronted Baldovino.

"I don't need any time off," she informed her comrade in arms. "I'm not stressed out. I'm perfectly capable of carrying out my duties."

Baldovino shook his head.

"Oh, don't be like that," he chided her. "We're not that far from Florence right now. You should go spend a night on the town. Have dinner. Hit some bars. Maybe find yourself a cute guy. That sort of thing. "

The last was delivered with another grin, one that did little to prevent Rosalia's protests.

"I don't really have anything to wear," she argued. That statement was partially true –she hadn't expected to need many changes of clothes on such a short mission, so all she'd brought with her were a couple sets of ordinary street clothes.

"So go out and _buy_ something to wear!" Baldovino countered, ignoring the fact that Rosalia wasn't even the type who tended to dress up a lot unless the situation actually required it. "You've got more than enough money for that. Seriously, aside from that Ducati, what the heck have you actually spent anything on since you started working at the agency?"

Rosalia shrugged. Much as she hated to admit it, Baldovino did have a point on that count. Outside of a few specific areas, she wasn't a big spender. Seeing her reaction, the support staff member sighed.

"Look, Rosalia, I know you're serious about your work, but you really need to take some time to relax once in a while. For those of us who are going to feel guilty if we let you work too much harder then we are, if nothing else."

The last was said with yet another one of those grins, and Rosalia found herself smiling weakly in response.

"Alright," she finally agreed. Baldovino smiled as he realised that he had won.

"'Atta girl, Rosa! You've got three days! Don't come back before they're up!"

Rosalia managed to force herself to keep smiling as Baldovino walked back to his car and got in. Once he had pulled away from the curb and started driving away however, her face fell.

_Find myself a cute guy, huh?_

She was tempted to do just that, but she knew it was useless. Her circumstances were such that any attempt at a relationship was doomed to be little more than a one night stand, if that.

_If all this hadn't happened, I'd probably be doing research for a paper right about now,_ she thought to herself. _Or maybe I'd be enjoying myself with some friends._

A melancholy expression took over her face as she sat there on her bike, the cigarette hanging limply from her mouth. This wasn't what she'd wanted to do with her life. It wasn't what the smart girl with a bright future who was going to go to university had wanted to do with her life. The girl who wore her hair long. Who had friends. Who laughed and smiled.

The girl who only knew how to use a gun because of the remote chance that her father's work in the domestic intelligence community might make her a target for retaliatory action.

Baldovino and the others like him at the agency didn't understand. They thought they were being nice to her by getting her time off. But the fact of the matter was, Rosalia didn't _want_ to spend time away from her job. She didn't _want_ time to reflect on what she had lost, on what was lacking in her life. She wanted to have a sense of purpose. A mission to take her mind off the here and now.

As long as she had her work to focus on, she could forget about the emptiness she felt inside.

The cigarette Rosalia had lit gradually began to burn down, and she eventually let it fall to the ground, crushing it firmly beneath one of her motorcycle boots after it reached the pavement. Gazing at the empty road ahead of her, the odd-eyed girl sighed, then donned her helmet and started her Ducati's engine. Resigned to her fate, she pulled off the side of the road and began to drive slowly towards Florence.

It was going to be a long three days.

Endnote

Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Next up –the introduction of Marisa, our second heroine (if you can really call Rosalia a heroine –she might be more deserving of anti-heroine status) and a somewhat more traditional Gunslinger Girl, complete with handler and a big gun in a viola case. Hopefully you'll like her.


End file.
